'Band Aid': Zoe Lister-Jones and Adam Pally Talk Fighting Through Music and Their Film's All-Female Crew
It was a huge weekend for women in Hollywood, as Wonder Woman — Patty Jenkins’ blockbuster take on the most iconic female superhero in comics — opened to a historic $103.5 million at the box office. Receiving a much quieter release on the other end of the budgetary spectrum was Band Aid, a critically acclaimed indie that arrived in select theaters with its own set of admirable credentials in the male-dominated movie business.
Writer/director/producer/star Zoe Lister-Jones (Breaking Upwards, TV’s Life in Pieces) hired an all-female production crew to work on the musical rom-com. And that was very much by design. “Yeah, sadly it doesn’t happen accidentally these days,” Lister-Jones told Yahoo Movies Friday in a Facebook Live interview (watch in full above), where she was joined by costar Adam Pally. “It was amazing,” she said. “It was a very nurturing and calm and patient and highly efficient set. So I highly recommend it.”
Lister-Jones and Pally play a married Los Angeles couple who constantly fight while dealing with the aftermath of a personal tragedy. It’s not until the pair bond by making music together, and subsequently form a garage band with their odd next-door neighbor (Fred Armisen), that their wounds begin to heal.
“I love writing music and writing lyrics, and I wanted to find a story that had music at its center,” Lister-Jones explained. “I do think music is very therapeutic, and I think the issues that plague couples in relationships are universal, so I thought it’d be really fun if those issues were explored through song.”
Band Aid is warm and smart and immediately relatable for couples, but it also helps that the music rocks. The film marks the first time we’ve seen Pally, best known for TV comedies Happy Endings and The Mindy Project, flex his sonic chops. “I don’t have much of a musical background,” he admitted. “I was in a few bands in high school that I was subsequently kicked out of for not taking it seriously.”
The Dirty Dishes, as Lister-Jones, Pally, and Armisen are collectively known in the film, could have a future outside of Band Aid. Described by Pally as a “poppier Liz Phair,” the group just dropped an EP and have played four (short) live gigs since the film’s Sundance premiere: once in Park City, twice in Brooklyn, and last week in Los Angeles. “We’ve been on a four-month tour where we’ve played four shows,” Pally laughed.
Band Aid is now in select theaters and hits video on demand June 9. Watch the trailer:
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